78th Academy Awards - Voting Trends and Reaction

Voting Trends and Reaction

For the second consecutive year, the field of major nominees did not include a bona fide blockbuster at the U.S. box office, with the nominees for Best Picture performing even more poorly than those of one year earlier.

None of the five Best Picture nominees was among the year's top 40 releases in box office at the time of the nominations, likely the most disappointing box-office performance of any Best Picture field in history; the film chosen as best Documentary Feature, March of the Penguins, earned more ($77.4 million) than any of the dramatic nominees, the first such occurrence in Academy history. As of January 31, Crash was the highest earner among the Best Picture nominees with $55.4 million in domestic box office receipts, and ranked as the 47th highest grosser of 2005. It was followed by Brokeback Mountain at $51 million (53rd) and Munich at $40.1 million (67th); Good Night, and Good Luck. ($25.1 million) and Capote ($15.3 million) rounded out the field. (By the time of the awards, Brokeback Mountain would surpass Crash with $78.9 million, benefitting from its position as Oscar frontrunner.) Of the top 50 releases of 2005 in U.S. box office through January, only Crash, Walk the Line (19th) and Cinderella Man (41st) received nominations for directing, acting or writing. The top 18 films in box office received a total of only 14 nominations, with a majority of these in the categories of Visual Effects, Sound Mixing and Sound Editing.

For the first time in five years, a majority of the Best Picture nominees were rated R (under 17 requires accompanying adult); it had been seven years since as many (four) of the nominees had earned that rating. Of the 85 nominations awarded to non-documentary feature films (apart from the Foreign Film category), a slight majority of 43 went to R-rated films, 25 to films rated PG-13, 16 to PG-rated films and 1 to a G-rated film. There was a remarkable rating-related division among the nominations: R-rated films captured 32 of the 40 nominations for Best Picture, directing, screenwriting and acting, while non-R-rated films received 34 of the 45 nominations in the remaining categories, primarily those in "below the line" areas (the music and editing categories accounted for 9 of the 11 nominations for R-rated films).

Also, the nominations were more widely dispersed than usual; it marked the first time in six years that no film received more than eight nominations. This was also the first time in 17 years that less than 5 songs were nominated in the Best Original Song category.

This year the awards ceremony started at 5:00 p.m. PST, 30 minutes earlier than the previous seven ceremonies. The pre-show was extended from its original thirty minutes to a full hour before the ceremony. The Barbara Walters Special, usually airing before or after the ceremony (depending on time zone) was for the second time, since 2003, aired on different days this time before the actual day of the ceremony, March 1 to accommodate these time changes.

As has become standard practice in recent years (since the ceremony in 2004 following the Janet Jackson Super Bowl controversy), the broadcast aired on a time delay in order to allow the network to censor offensive material. This occurred during the performance of "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" when several words were blanked out at the start of the song, and later one phrase was bleeped during Three 6 Mafia's acceptance speech. One phrase in the chorus that was supposed to be sung as "bitches talking shit" was replaced with the less-offensive phrase "witches jumping ships".

As with tradition, last year's acting winners present an acting award for the opposite sex. Cate Blanchett won Best Supporting Actress the previous year but was contractually signed to star in a play in New York City, therefore unable to present the award for Best Supporting Actor; Nicole Kidman was recruited to fill in.